(courtesy Penguin Books Australia)
Books have power, real, life-transforming, soul-restorative power.
If you been a reader for any length of time, you will know this quite well, especially if, like this reviewer, reading got you through some quite harrowing parts of life where the real world was desperately unkind and cruel and the only viable escape was into the worlds that greeted you in the pages of endless numbers of books.
The strength and veracity of this singular truth comes to the heartwarming and often deeply moving fore in Libby Page’s latest novel, This Book Made Me Think of You, in which books are almost the heroes of the hour, a conduit to memories past while also opening doors to a hopeful and unexpected future.
If anyone needs some hope, it’s the book’s protagonist, Londoner and book editor Tilly Nightingale who is still awash in the grief of losing her beloved American-born husband Joe some five months earlier and who still feels deeply sad and angry at the world.
On her birthday, the first without her soulmate, she gets a call from the local bookshop Book Lane, operated by youthful bookseller Alfie Lane, telling her that she has a present waiting for her from Joe, something which shocks her to the core, not only because Joe is long gone but because she’s well and truly lost her once flourishing love for reading, her immersive, escapist diversion lost to caring for and then mourning her dead husband.
‘Oh, Joe,’ she says out loud, her eyes flicking to the blue ceramic urn that rests on one of the bookshelves. It’s a deep shae of indigo, dappled with flecks of paler blue that reminded Tilly of Joe’s eyes when she chose it. The silence is so full of his absence that for a moment she almost expects to hear his voice. The room seems to grow darker, grief shrouding her like a cloak. She waits for a beat longer and then folds the letter and tucks it carefully back into the book.
But the gift is real, the product of Joe thoughtfully, at a time when he was dying and could be forgiven for focusing only on himself and his impending passing from the world, picking out 12 books to be handed to Tilly on the first of the month.
They are not only a beautifully touching gift from the grave, though on her first visit an angry Tilly acts as if it’s the worst thing in the world, her grief-fuelled fury understandably getting the best of her, but it turns out Joe’s way of getting her unstuck from grief and finding a way forward at a time when it appears there isn’t one to be had.
These 12 books drive the narrative of This Book Made Me Think of You, which ends up including 80 books over its length, as they push Tilly to reacquaint herself with old loves, explore new possibilities and to reignite her onetime vibrant passion for life.
Each book comes with a heartfelt note from Joe, which break Tilly’s heart but which also bring her immense comfort as she remembers how much Joe loved her but how he was also a champion for everything she was and loved doing.
His encouragement by way of books like Matilda by Roald Dahl, Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear by Elizabeth Gilbert and What I Talk About When I Talk About Running: a Memoir by Haruki Murakami turns out to be the catalyst for a reluctant Tilly to re-embrace reading, to get fit again and to tackle a host of goals.
They also propel Tilly on a series of overseas jaunts, most transformationally to Paris, where she finds an unexpected community of friends and fellow inhabitants of grief’s dark passages at the legendary bookshop, Shakespeare & Co, to New York where she decides to forego seeing the sights (which she saw many times with Joe, anyway on his trips home to see his family) in favour of just living the delights of the city and the gorgeous vistas of Bali and Tuscany.
Tilly is initially unsure about what to do with these gifts, that are surprising in and of themselves but which compel to consider what her life looks like after Joe.
Can she live again, and as she gets to know the lovely Alfie better, can she love again?
It’s a LOT to consider, and at times Tilly is overwhelmed with the hugeness of it all, but as she works through her grief and the sense of corrosive loss that suggests nothing good can follow the love of her life, she begins to realise that more chapters await her in life and that more pages are waiting to be turned.
The wondrously affecting part of all this coming alive again that Tilly does in the pages of This Book Made Me Think of You is that Page doesn’t rush things purely for some joy-inducing final act renewal.
Tilly is the time she needs to take one step forward, three steps back and to follow hope with despair, connection with rupture.
She [Tilly] nods and takes her spot beside him [Alfie], their hips almost but not quite touching as they work side by side. The small space fills with the smell of onions and garlic, and with a warmth that has been missing for a long time.
It’s a deeply beautiful connection we go on with Tilly in This Book Made Me Think of You which is as much a love letter to the power of reading as it is the way grief gives way to life and hope once again but only when it is the right time for you.
There is a rich and empathetic appreciation of how hard it is to return to life after grief has sunk its heartbreaking claws into you, and Page never pretends for a second that a few books will make everything better.
What she does do, and do superbly well, is peel back what grief looks like, how it can imprison you but how at the right time, and in the right way (Joe, you are genius) life can be brought back alive again.
The books are undeniably a joy to see front and centre, as is the comfort we gain from bookstores which are often the beating heart of their local community, but what is most beautiful about This Book Made Me Think of You is how it reminds us of the power of words on the page to impel change in the real world.
Reading is often seen as something removed from real life, and happily in many ways it is an escape, but what’s often forgotten, although not in the pages of This Book Made Me Think of You, is that it has real world effects on how we live our lives, especially when, as is the case with Tilly, it feels like everything is dead and buried and lost forever.